Nile Gardiner is a Washington-based foreign affairs analyst and political commentator. A former aide to Margaret Thatcher, Gardiner has served as a foreign policy adviser to two US presidential campaigns. He appears frequently on American and British television, including Fox News Channel, BBC, and Fox Business Network.

Barack Obama’s Arafat blunder is an embarrassment for the leader of the free world

As Daniel Halper at The Weekly Standardhas reported, Barack Obama took part in a joint press conference with President Mahmoud Abbas in the West Bank this morning under a beaming banner of Yasser Arafat, also known as the “father of modern terrorism”. The Standard piece quotes from an extensive timeline of Arafat’s reign of terror, drawn up by the Committee for Accuracy in Middle East Reporting in America, reminding its readers of Arafat’s grim track record:

Groups under Arafat's direct or indirect command – including Fatah, Black September, Tanzim and Al Aqsa Martyrs Brigade – were responsible for hundreds of bombings, hijackings, assassinations and other attacks, including the 1972 murder of 11 of Israel's Olympic athletes in Munich, the 1973 murder of the American ambassador to Sudan, Cleo Noel, and the 1985 hijacking of the Achille Lauro cruiseship (resulting in the murder of wheelchair-bound Leon Klinghoffer).

It is simply astonishing that the leader of the free world would agree to speak against a backdrop of a murderous terrorist with American and Israeli blood on his hands. What kind of message does this send to America’s enemies when the president of the United States gives a press conference standing in front of a banner celebrating one of the most brutal terrorists in history? It projects a clear signal that Washington is weak in the face of terrorism, and it is an insult to the memory of those who died at the hands of Arafat’s terror network.

While the Obama White House prides itself on having an extremely slick campaign operation, its ineptness and insensitivity in government, not least on the world stage, can be staggering. President Obama, for example, could not even pronounce the name of Burmese freedom fighter Aung San Suu Kyi on his recent visit to Rangoon, referring to her several times as Aung YAN Suu Kyi. He also famously called the Falkland Islands "the Maldives", and succeeded in offending the whole of Poland when he referred to a "Polish death camp" in World War Two. As I’ve noted in previous pieces, President Obama’s first term was littered with embarrassing gaffes abroad, and it looks like his second term will be more of the same. This is in many respects an amateurish presidency, headed by a president who is frequently out of his depth on the world stage, and all too willing to appease America’s adversaries.